Building Asheville's brand, a bottle at a time

Buchi's marketing guru mentors aspiring entrepreneurs

Mar. 16, 2013

Zane Adams of Buchi checks on a beer-finishing carbonation tank. Partly due to Adams' efforts, Buchi is now one of the top 10 craft brewers of kombucha, an all-natural, fermented, nonalcoholic beverage. In his spare time, he is a mentor for The Big Tasty. / Bill Sanders/wsanders@citizen-times.com

As a marketer and relationship builder, Adams gets to work in “the heart of a company.”

“It’s the way you communicate, the way you interact with the outside world,” said Adams, who handles marketing and enterprise relationships for Buchi, an Asheville manufacturer of kombucha, a cultured, brewed tea product.

“And I wanted to have an effect on that heart and really help create and craft a marketing infrastructure in a company that would actually be a healthy heart.”

After about five years focusing on strengthening Buchi, Adams is offering his experience and expertise to the contestants of The Big Tasty, a food business contest launched by Asheville-based agribusiness incubator Blue Ridge Food Ventures to determine the next great North Carolina food product or service.

Partly due to Adams’ efforts, Buchi is now one of the top 10 craft brewers of kombucha, an all-natural, fermented, nonalcoholic beverage. (There are about 40 brewers in the United States, Adams said.)

The company, which launched about five years ago, started by making 20 gallons a week in a Chestnut Street home kitchen for sale at local farmers markets.

This week, the company will produce 800 to 1,200 gallons for sale in 300 retail stores across the Southeast.

Since February, Adams’ schedule has also included emails, phone calls and meetings with The Big Tasty finalists in preparation for their presentations and taste tests with a professional panel of judges this week.

Jack and master of all trades

“Zane is one of those jacks-of-all-trades, but he is a master of all of them,” said Robert Parriott, a Big Tasty finalist for his idea, Carolina Mountain Potato Chips. Parriott consulted with Adams at Buchi’s Weaverville facility and farm about his brand logo.

“He knows everything and speaks so succinctly and eloquently. His intelligence is stratospheric,” he noted.

Final presentations and taste tests with a professional panel of judges will be made next week.

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The overall winner, which will be announced in April, will receive $2,500 and 100 hours worth of free use of the Blue Ridge Food Ventures commercial kitchen space and equipment, worth almost $2,400.

The champion may also win shelf placement in the 15 North Carolina stores owned by Greensboro-based grocery retailer The Fresh Market.

Parriott, who is one of eight finalists, has “already won in so many ways.”

“I feel like I’ve been elevated to another level of entrepreneurship,” he said.

Although Adams mentors contestants on his own time, his generosity is, in a way, still part of his job description.

“We have a genuine focus that when you are a community-centered company and really believe in supporting community,” said Adams.

“It means not just financially, but energetically, in the terms of support, partnerships and carrying the message of Asheville wherever you go.”

'Good instincts'

“He’s got a lot of good energy and positive spirit,” she noted, but he’s also really grounded in reality. “He’s trying to help them focus and break (duties) up into manageable pieces.”

And there’s much to manage when it comes to a food-based business, Adams noted.

“It’s a very daunting task,” he said. “Food is a perishable item. You have to invest a lot in equipment, packaging. You have to work with government bodies to make sure your product is safe. It’s pretty challenging. You have to put up a lot of money up front with hope that someone will think it tastes good.”

One finalist, the group behind a doughnut food truck concept, dropped out of the competition after determining the business wasn’t right for this point in their lives.

'Internal audit'

Adams called The Big Tasty process “an internal audit” for these aspiring entrepreneurs because the finalists have access to seasoned mentors, as well as free access to Rutgers University food business online courses, to truly determine if it’s a direction they can “commit to.”

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Adams’ background is not in the food business. He didn’t even like kombucha the first time he tried it, he said (it wasn’t one of the Buchi flavors).

His interest lied instead with anthropology and sociology.

“I thought it was fascinating to learn about the human species and how we behave,” he said, “how we cohabitate, live and express ourselves. That led me, oddly, into marketing, but marketing is a byproduct.”

Before moving to Asheville six years ago, Adams worked in Orlando, Fla., for a resort development company with Universal. Adams helped build resorts around the globe and sell memberships to them at prices ranging from around $125,000 to $500,000.

“It was the top of the top,” he said, noting services included such luxuries as private jet access.

Adams found the work creatively satisfying, but “at the end of the day, you are making a lot of money,” he said.

“You are helping big people make a lot of money. You are married to the job.”

He noted his former job is “a valid part of our system,” but “for me, it wasn’t what makes me happy at the end of the day.”

Vacationed in Asheville

Adams selected Asheville as his next stop: He had visited on vacation and fell in love with the community.

He wasn’t sure, however, exactly how his professional life would take shape in these mountains. “I didn’t really know how I was going to serve. I want to help generate profits for a higher purpose,” he said.

After working with a handful of local companies, including Rosetta’s Kitchen, Adams met the women behind Buchi — Sarah Schomber and Jeannine Buscher — about six months after his relocation.

He’s now one of about 11 employees who work on a consistent basis; three to five people help with regional demonstrations and other appearances.

Adams credits Blue Ridge Food Ventures for the company’s development: After about a year using the shared commercial kitchen, the group moved into a former organic wine warehouse in 2009.

Since that move, the company has expanded its brewery operations in the facility. Three times.

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“We finished renovating recently, our third expansion,” he said. “We are going to have to expand our cooler soon. Just as soon as we are done with this expansion, we have to do another.”

Part of this growth has come through new partnerships with other local businesses. For example,the Buchi Air flavor features Echinacea Supreme grown at the Gaia Herbs farm in Brevard.

In the coming months, the company’s next partnership will debut in Whole Foods grocery stores.

It is creating a kombucha sorbet with Asheville’s Ultimate Ice Cream company.

Helping other businesses

Buchi works with other businesses in a more behind-the-scenes capacity, too.

“There are times, for instance, that we will have extra sugar, and we will offer it to other businesses that need it,” he said. That willingness to collaborate and help is key to success in Asheville, therefore making it an “overarching theme for The Big Tasty,” he said. “If you are going to put out a food product here, you are going to have to collaborate with other people,” he said.

“Not only because it is going to enable you to siphon a great wealth of information, it buys you into this unified front. We all help each other because then Asheville grows, the brand of the city gets out there more.”

He has already gotten this return, so to speak, from his time spent mentoring through The Big Tasty.

“Anytime we have the ability to provide aid, teach or help people access information, it’s a growth moment for us,” Adams said. “This also reminds us where Buchi was and how much more work we have to do.”